Rex Stout is best known for the magnificent series of mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, but early on he experimented with other detective characters. One of them was Tecumseh Fox, who rated three books between 1939 and 1941, including one (Bad for Business) whose plot was lifted nearly wholesale by Stout and re-set in the Wolfe universe. I've only read one of these and it was fine; no match for the majesty of Nero and Archie in my eyes.

The other detective Stout created, Theodolinda Bonner, only has one book in her own name, but she lived on as a supporting character in several of the Wolfe stories. There are enough promising elements in this, her one star turn, to make me sort of wish she had gotten another shot at the spotlight later on. "Dol" is a young woman whose life takes an abrupt left turn when her affluent father loses all his money and kills himself. Determined to never again rely on a man for anything, Dol sets herself up in business as a licensed private detective, with the help of her friend and partner, the still-affluent (though not yet of age) Sylvia Rattray.

Sylvia's guardian, P.L. Storrs, disapproves of her foray into such a tawdry occupation as private eye and pressures her to give it all up. She reluctantly agrees to do so, and when the guardian turns up dead suspicion falls on Dol, who would seem to be the main victim of his social prudishness. But it turns out there are other folks scattered around the wealthy enclaves of upstate New York who might have had their own reasons for wishing themselves rid of Mr. Storrs.

To be honest, the plot in this one is a bit of a mess but the characters of Dol and Sylvia were engaging enough that I would have willingly read more of their adventures. Alas, it was not to be, and I had to settle for making Archie Goodwin my first and still favorite literary boyfriend. ( )

4/9/22

Man, I keep reading [a:Rex Stout|41112|Rex Stout|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201136975p2/41112.jpg] novels that are not Nero Wolfe stories, hoping that they'll be just as great, and I keep getting disappointed. This is better than the others I've read, I suppose, but still no where nearly as satisfying as a Wolfe. I'd been thinking that the problem is that the main character here - Dol Bonner, a female detective who plays a minor recurring role in the Wolfe novels - doesn't really show the qualities or competence that have garnered her Wolfe's & Goodwin's respect. But on reflection, I think my main complaint is that Stout himself is not nearly as engaging a narrator as Archie Goodwin, and that might be the problem with all his other books.
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This story introduces the woman detective Dol Bonner as an independent main character. She also appears in the Nero Wolfe novelette "Too Many Detectives" as a secondary character and I believe may be mentioned elsewhere. I think she is more interesting that Stout's other non-Wolfe detective Tecumseh Fox, but as with Fox, Stout did not develop her very far. This story begins with an investigation of brutal attacks on animals in a estate belonging to a fried of Bonner's partner Sylvia Rattray
(who is actually the point of view character, though not telling the story first person like Archie Goodwin) and later graduates the murder of a human being. ( )

Rex Stout is best known for his iconic Nero Wolfe character, but he also created the female detective Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner, who came to being in the standalone novel "The Hand in the Glove" in 1937, one of the very first female private eyes.

Although Stout only gave Bonner one solo outing, she also guest-starred in some of the Nero Wolfe stories, one of the few women Wolfe tolerated perhaps because she herself claimed to have been "inoculated against" men, even her suitor, the newspaperman Len Chisholm. Although The Hand in the Glove is a contemporary of the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin titles, it was written in the third person narrative, not Archie's sarcastic first-person. Even so, it still has some of the hallmark wit that graces the Wolfe/Goodwin novels.

In the book, a religious charlatan has charmed the wife of wealthy industrialist, P.L. Storrs, who decides he needs a private investigator to look into the man and hires Bonner, even though he doesn't approve of female detectives. But when she arrives at Storrs' country estate, she instead finds the body of her client and a garden party filled with a bouquet of suspects.

Bonner isn't quite the fully realized, tough-as-nails P.I. of the 21st century, sending out mixed messages about her ability to do the job as a woman, perhaps mirroring the changing-but-still-traditional views of women in Stout's day. Bonner begins the novel as part of a two-woman firm, Bonner and Raffray, although the Raffray half soon dissolves, Bonner being disgusted about Raffray's submissiveness to her fiancée.

Yet, Bonner concedes she herself decided to be a detective on flimsy grounds, adding, "I made a long list of all the activities I might undertake on my own. They all seemed monotonous or distasteful except two or three, and I flipped a coin to decide between detective and landscape design." Although she's a smart cookie and solves the crimes where the male detectives in the case don't, she's also squeamish about seeing corpses and faints after she shoots a criminal. ( )